Hail, flooding disruptive in Mississippi, Alabama

BILOXI, Miss. – A spring storm dumped heavy rains and baseball-size hail and whipped up winds across the Southeast on Saturday, flooding homes and cars in parts of Mississippi and Alabama.

The system also hit the central part of the country with snow, prompting blizzard warnings and a disaster declaration in Kansas. It was blamed for two traffic deaths in Oklahoma.

About 100 roads in southern Mississippi were impassable at the height of the bad weather because of the flooding, including the main route into Biloxi, Harrison County Emergency Management Director Rupert Lacy said.

Some residents had to be rescued from their stalled and stranded cars, and others were helped from flooded homes, Lacy said.

More than 200 homes in the Biloxi area sustained flood damage and two roads sustained major pavement washouts, Lacy said.

The Biloxi area had 5 to 10 inches of rain in a 24-hour period, said Bobby Weaver, operations chief for the county emergency agency.

People were evacuated from about a dozen homes in Geneva County in southeast Alabama because of flooding, said Margaret Mixon, the county’s emergency management director. And all roads in the county were closed because of the flooding, Mixon said.